World stages, local audiences: Essays on performance, place and politics (Theatre: Theory – Practice – Performance)

About the book

About the AuthorMaria M. Delgado is Director of Research at Royal Central School of Speech and DramaMaggie B. Gale is Professor and Chair in Drama at The University of ManchesterMaggie B. Gale is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of BirminghamProduct DescriptionWorld Stages, local audiences argues that the forms of intimacy and identification that come from being part of the public of a local performance, provide a potential model for rethinking our roles as world citizens. Using his own experience of recent theatrical practice in Vancouver as a starting point, Dickinson maps the spaces of connection and contestation, the flows of sentiment and social responsibility, produced by different communities in response to global sports spectacles. He also analyses how such topics are taken up in the work of playwrights, conceptual, installation, and performance artists like Ai Weiwei, and Rebecca Belmore. In so doing, Dickinson makes an original contribution to the emerging discourse on live art and 'livability' by examining not only the geographical and historical affiliations between different sites of performance, but also the – at times – radical new social bonds created by audiences witness to those performances.ReviewWide in scope and roving in style, World Stages, Local Audiences offers readers a rich investigation of the complex and shifting relationships among performance, place, and audience... [The book] ... outlines an ambitious project that ultimately raises important philosophical questions about the situatedness of meaning, opening up new avenues for future research and discussiona divertingly diverse monograph....its four chapters present analyses of a select set of performative/ performance examples that attempt to cross the high wire between "think global" and "act local". For a project of elevated ambitions, this discursive amplitude ... take[s] focused daring to especially encompassing heightsFrom the Back CoverWorld Stages, local audiences argues that the forms of intimacy and identification that come from being part of the public of a local performance, provide a potential model for rethinking our roles as world citizens. Using his own experience of recent theatrical practice in Vancouver as a starting point, Dickinson maps the spaces of connection and contestation, the flows of sentiment and social responsibility, produced by different communities in response to global sports spectacles. He also analyses how such topics are taken up in the work of playwrights, conceptual, installation, and performance artists like Ai Weiwei, and Rebecca Belmore. In so doing, Dickinson makes an original contribution to the emerging discourse on live art and 'livability' by examining not only the geographical and historical affiliations between different sites of performance, but also the – at times – radical new social bonds created by audiences witness to those performances.